When I was just a young lad (around five or six), my brother was getting into the great sport of baseball. So my parents decided to take him to the batting cages.

As my brother was learning the basic stance from our Dad, I wandered around putting on helmets and swinging bats. Just plain acting like the child I was. As Dad stepped out of the cage, my brother began.

I'm not going to deny it. He was good from the start. Pretty dang good, in fact. I was amazed at his skill so I started pestering Dad.

"Can I do it? I wanna do it. Please let me try Daddy."

After the third or fourth time my brother gets tired. My Dad finally gave in.

He hands me a bat and helmet and throws me into the cage to do my thing. No instructions. No passed on knowledge. Just a simple "Do what your brother did."

So I step up and the red light comes on.

"Get ready" was the last thing I heard. Soon after, everything went black.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the back of my Dad'* Bronco. With a few strange people standing behind him.

As I looked around, I realized my pants were off and I had an immense pain the my groinal region.

Apparently, I had stood directly over the plate and took a shot straight to my southern brothers. A 65 mph nutshot.

Of course, I doubled over in pain. My Dad rushed into the cage to pull me out as another ball was released and drilled my helmet. At this point I passed out.

Thank God my Dad insisted on that helmet. Although, a cup would have been nice in retrospect.

At that moment, when I found out what happened, I figured baseball just wasn't my thing.

All that I took away from that was a nice case of swollen junk which made me look really impressive in the pants region. That went away a few weeks later.